DRAFT TWO SCULPTURES TO GOETHE AND SCHILLER – In Weimar, where I was born and where I spent the first years of my life, lies the cornerstone of my world of values, which I learned from my father and was shaped by Humanism and the Enlightenment.
For him as a literature professor and Goethe expert, education in a Goethean sense always saw itself as a value in itself.
In a dramatically changing world, in which education is increasingly being replaced by information, the idea of creating a visual expression for this phenomenon arises.
I plastinated parts of my old “Brockhaus”, giving it a fixed, unchangeable form, arranged a stack and screwed it onto a base on which Goethe’s handwriting is placed.
All of this is coated several times with an iron emulsion and made to rust with oxidation accelerators.
The different grate surfaces and differently designed layers of the base correspond to the handwriting of Goethe, which appear in the same materiality, whereby the rust can be understood as a synonym for age and transience.
On top of the book tower there is an owl as a symbol of wisdom and guardian of knowledge.
A second sculpture, assigned to Schiller and communicating with the first, is in the process of being created.
The original sculptures have heights of 125 and 145cm.
